Discounting, patience, and dynamic decision making

Whether they are financial, economic, or psychological, discount rates affect most economic decisions: investment and savings, hirings and firings, defaults and refinancing, financial and economic reforms, learning and experimentation, and any other decision with long-term consequences, such as gas...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Quah, J, Strulovici, B
Format: Working paper
Published: University of Oxford 2011
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author Quah, J
Strulovici, B
author_facet Quah, J
Strulovici, B
author_sort Quah, J
collection OXFORD
description Whether they are financial, economic, or psychological, discount rates affect most economic decisions: investment and savings, hirings and firings, defaults and refinancing, financial and economic reforms, learning and experimentation, and any other decision with long-term consequences, such as gas emissions control. This paper studies these questions in a unified framework, providing general insights and results showing how discounting affects i) the expected utility of an agent, ii) the timing and the magnitude of his decisions, and iii) the path of underlying state variables controlled by the agent. The analysis includes the case of a time-inconsistent agent and of stochastic discounting.
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spelling oxford-uuid:30d67065-3042-451e-bcb8-0276544fe50d2022-03-26T13:04:02ZDiscounting, patience, and dynamic decision makingWorking paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:30d67065-3042-451e-bcb8-0276544fe50dSymplectic ElementsBulk import via SwordUniversity of Oxford2011Quah, JStrulovici, BWhether they are financial, economic, or psychological, discount rates affect most economic decisions: investment and savings, hirings and firings, defaults and refinancing, financial and economic reforms, learning and experimentation, and any other decision with long-term consequences, such as gas emissions control. This paper studies these questions in a unified framework, providing general insights and results showing how discounting affects i) the expected utility of an agent, ii) the timing and the magnitude of his decisions, and iii) the path of underlying state variables controlled by the agent. The analysis includes the case of a time-inconsistent agent and of stochastic discounting.
spellingShingle Quah, J
Strulovici, B
Discounting, patience, and dynamic decision making
title Discounting, patience, and dynamic decision making
title_full Discounting, patience, and dynamic decision making
title_fullStr Discounting, patience, and dynamic decision making
title_full_unstemmed Discounting, patience, and dynamic decision making
title_short Discounting, patience, and dynamic decision making
title_sort discounting patience and dynamic decision making
work_keys_str_mv AT quahj discountingpatienceanddynamicdecisionmaking
AT strulovicib discountingpatienceanddynamicdecisionmaking